It's hard to find humor in death, but Vincent Graziano has found a way to do it.

Most of us spend our lives trying to avoid death, but for Vincent Graziano, death is inescapable. Graziano's a third generation funeral director. His grandfather ran a funeral home on Manhattan's Lower East Side, and Graziano has been running one himself in Westchester county for more than thirty years.

A theme park called Freedomland that opened in the Bronx 51 years ago, was known as the "Disneyland of the East."

Here in the Bronx the Bay Plaza Shopping Center just south of Co-op City attracts shoppers to places like Barnes and Noble and JCPenney, but half a century ago the area packed people in for another reason. The site was home to an amusement park even bigger than Disneyland.

An exploration of stores that have come and gone and those that have stood the test of time in NYC

In New York, like in many American cities, mom-and-pop shops are slowly disappearing. Owners who can no longer afford their rent abruptly fold, retire with no one in the family interested in taking over the business, or simply decide it's not worth competing against the big box store that opened up down the street.